Sharing my love of genealogy and my experience as a genealogist to inspire everyone to search out their family trees...the past, present, and future are all connected. Researching your family tree is like looking for a bunch of needles in a whole lot of haystacks, and then threading those needles together to tell your family's story. If you know where you come from you can know who you are and where you're going!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Elijah and Elizabeth Sprague and an unknown Emma Sprague at Greenfield Cemetery in Uniondale, New York

Elijah and Elizabeth Sprague are my 5th great grandparents on my mom's side of the family. Their daughter, Elmira, married James Raynor, and they are my 4th great grandparents. So many of my ancestors are buried in Greenfield, some because it's just local, and others because they were originally buried in Freeport, but that cemetery was built over and all the bodies moved to Greenfield, two towns up. I didn't know Elijah and Elizabeth were there, although I should have assumed. I went there on my lunch break a few months ago to take photos of and visit the Raynor, Berg, and Dauch family plots and once I was done with that, I decided to wander around, as I am wont to do when I'm in a cemetery. Sometimes I'm looking for interesting headstones, but in Greenfield in particular, I'm looking at and recognizing almost every single name from my genealogy research-by marriage and through other branches, I feel like I'm related to everybody in there!

Anyway, I stumbled upon these headstones by accident. Or maybe the universe drew me to that place so I could finally "meet" these relatives I had so far only known through census records. Elijah's headstone reads, "In memory of Elijah Sprague who died Dec. 31, 1858 aged 80 years, 9 mos, & 13 days."

Right next to him is Elizabeth (they say she's a Smith, but I've never been able to verify that or connect her to any Long Island branch of the Smith family), and her headstone reads,"In memory of Elizabeth, wife of Elijah Sprague who died March 29, 1859 aged 80 years, 10 months, & 26 days."

Next to them is a third headstone for an Emma J. Sprague, and to be honest, I'm not quite sure who it is. I was just checking and I don't have an Emma Sprague in my records, but maybe it's a grandchild of theirs, based on the dates? That headstone reads, "In memory of Emma J. Sprague died Dec. 18, 1885, aged 16 years, 8 months & 16 days."